Push and pull of a human tide

SIX months ago Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared victory in his Government's war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The civil conflict had been under way for a quarter of a century. It had killed 70,000 people. After the final defeat of the Tigers in May, it left 250,000 Tamils crowded into government camps with promises of internal resettlement showing few signs of progress.

Yet it was only a few weeks ago, when 78 Tamils ended up aboard a Customs vessel, that these tumultuous events penetrated Australia's public consciousness.

The people rescued by the Oceanic Viking are part of a mini-surge of asylum seekers - including many Sri Lankans - coming to Australia by boat since September last year.

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While the numbers are minuscule by world standards, and significantly lower than the 13,000-plus asylum seekers who arrived in 2001, they have sparked a vociferous political debate.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has attributed the rising numbers to global increases in flows of asylum seekers, pointing to the fighting in Sri Lanka as one of the ''push'' factors causing more people to flee their homelands.

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The Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, says people smugglers reckon the Government has gone soft on border protection: asylum seekers are being ''pulled'' by Labor's softer policies rather than pushed by global trends.

Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United Nations, Palitha Kohona, is backing the ''pull factors'' story big-time. He told ABC TV on Wednesday that Tamils were not ill-treated in Sri Lanka and that the people on the Oceanic Viking were economic refugees, following the ''magnetic attraction'' of a more prosperous life in a rich country.

''If they were actually escaping from Sri Lanka, one has to ask the question as to why they did not escape to India which is only 22 miles away from Sri Lanka rather than go all the way to Australia,'' he said.

''There must be another reason than simple push factor. The magnet of Australia, which many of us discovered years ago, is still there.''

But refugee advocates say this should be taken with a grain of salt. ''It is hardly surprising that the Sri Lankan Government would find it difficult to accept that people were leaving the country because there is serious persecution,'' says Paul Power, the chief executive of the Refugee Council of Australia.

Mr Power says it is disingenuous to suggest refugees from Sri Lanka would only go to the nearest destination in India, which is not a signatory to the international refugee convention and can more closely police the narrow crossing.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees statistics show the number of Sri Lankans lodging asylum claims has been rising since the military conflict intensified at the start of last year.

In the first six months of this year, 5248 Sri Lankans claimed asylum in the world's 44 industrialised economies (which include Australia). That was up 11 per cent on the first half of last year which, in turn, was up 30 per cent on the comparable period in 2007. It made Sri Lanka the 11th largest source of asylum seekers arriving in industrialised economies.

The statistics show 438 Sri Lankans sought asylum in Australia in the first six months of this year. That was up 68 per cent on the same period last year - a much bigger increase than the rise in Sri Lankans arriving in all industrialised countries.

By contrast Sri Lankan arrivals in Australia in the first half of last year were slightly down on 2007.

Those contrasting trends suggest that both push and pull factors have been at work, given the Rudd Government scrapped the Howard government's Pacific solution in early 2008 and softened policy on mandatory detention and temporary protection visas later that year.

Australia's share of all rich-world asylum claims has been rising. But this started in 2004, not when Labor softened policy.

Australia's share of rich-world asylum claims peaked at 2.5 per cent in 2001, fell to 0.8 per cent in 2004 and has edged up each year since then to reach 1.4 per cent so far this year.

Academic experts have little doubt that asylum seeker flows are generally a pushmi-pullyu affair. A London School of Economics professor, Eric Neumayer, empirically analysed refugee flows to Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

He found that economic hardship, political oppression, human rights abuse and violent conflict influenced the number of asylum seekers coming to Europe as a whole. But the share going to individual European nations were influenced by specific characteristics of those countries.

He found that a country's share of asylum claims rose if it was wealthier, had a more tolerant climate for immigrants, was geographically closer to origin countries, had larger communities of already-settled refugees - and had more lenient policies.

How important are immigration polices in the mixture of pull factors?

An Australian National University economist, Tim Hatton, analysed asylum seeker movements around the world between 1997 and 2006, using an index which measured policy changes in destination countries.

Australia's score on this index rose sharply, and the number of asylum seekers declined, following the Howard government's policy changes in 2001.

Taking into account the impact of all other push and pull factors, Professor Hatton estimated the tougher policy explained nearly 30 per cent of the decline in arrival numbers in Australia from 1997 to 2006.

He reckons the latest increases will almost certainly reflect both push and pull factors. ''The trend in asylum-seeker numbers has been rising in all industrialised countries since around the end of 2007 … But the figures also show the number of asylum-seeker claims in Australia has risen by more than it has in the rest of the industrialised countries,'' he told the Herald.

He cautions against concluding that it is solely policy changes which have driven Australia's rising share of claims.

''Firstly, you can't help thinking that part of the story for the surge in Australia relative to other countries is that Australia receives proportionately more people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and that is where asylum seekers arriving in the West are coming from,'' he said.

''Secondly, we know that Australia's economy has suffered less in the global financial crisis than almost any other OECD country and we also know that asylum seekers are sensitive to economic conditions in the receiving countries.''

Professor Hatton says Australia may also have lost some of its reputation for toughness.

''The publicity the Tampa affair created around the world was like a megaphone. A whole raft of policies was put in place after the Tampa but I think it was not only the actual policies but the talking tough on the world stage that mattered.''

It seems Western politicians who want to deter unauthorised asylum-seeker arrivals need to replace Teddy Roosevelt's ''speak softly and carry a big stick'' dictum with the formula ''carry a big stick and an even bigger megaphone''.